Zhao Zichen and a Creative Theology: The Life of Jesus (1935)1

The Christian intellectuals and leaders who inherited the mission legacy and its rhetoric and remained within historic denominations occupied a demanding mediating position: interpreting Christian thought to China and Christ into Chinese modes. Zhao Zichen (T. C. Chao) was at the forefront of those conceptualizing and realizing a Chinese Protestant church. Chapter Three discusses Zhao’s 1935 Life of Jesus (Yesu zhuan), a semi-fictional biography written to respond to the call for a new “Chinese Christian Literature.” In its study of this highly readable short work, replete with Chinese literary references, the chapter focuses on the structure of the narrative, on Jesus’ self-understanding as the Messiah and on the role of landscape in the novella.

The Christian Imprint: The Shaping of Republican-Era Theology

The 1920s and 1930s produced some of the most exciting and voluminous theology in Chinese history as Chinese leaders gained more prominence in churches, revival movements drew converts in, mission education began to provide a stream of theology graduates, and the Chinese Christian press expanded. The nature of “Chinese Christianity” was a prime source of reflection, but so too was the Chinese state itself and the nature of Christian duty to the nation. Chapter Two surveys the state of Chinese Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth century (considering the effects of internal church developments, anti-imperialism, Christian education, elite social responsibility, and the Anti-Christian movements), then explores the notion of theology as a collective publishing exercise, via a reading of Republican Christian journals.

Afterword

Standing in a Sunday service at a Roman Catholic church in central China recently, an impressive and lively church with discreet electronic boards on the pillars displaying the liturgy in real time, I was struck with renewed force by the difficulty of worshipping with a sense of inauthenticity. This was a rare occurrence; there is usually no occasion to doubt a priest’s or minister’s faith as expressed in the sermon or worship. That morning, however, a disturbing unease at the perception of an inauthentic leader—perhaps not even in the sense of unbelieving, but for presenting a homily that did not ring true and came across as a government circular or directive—was a bleak reminder of the choices that Chinese congregations and theologians have faced for decades....

Yang Huilin: An Academic Search for Meaning

Among scholars of Christian theology and philosophy working in universities in China are card-carrying CCP members, many without any personal faith or denominational allegiance, yet whose thinking and writing on Chinese Christianity and culture have proved significant in and beyond academia. While far from representative of the church, their academic scholarship is valuable for its theological insight as well as for the institutional presence of its practitioners. This chapter considers the writings of Yang Huilin (b. 1954), a key figure in the Sino-Christian theology movement and a professor of comparative literature and religious studies, whose work triangulates between philosophy, literary/critical theory, and theology. The chapter suggests that recurrent questions across Yang’s work condense ultimately into two: the use of language and the pursuit of meaning. These culminate in his promotion of a “Chinese Scriptural Reasoning” and call for a “nonreligious religion.”

Ding Guangxun: Maintaining the Church

Ding Guangxun (K. H. Ting, 1915–2012) was heralded during his lifetime as the premier church statesman of the PRC era, a figure whose leadership of the authorized Protestant church and its national seminary spanned five decades and whose theological thought guided the church through much of that period. Ding’s theology is highly pragmatic in orientation, and his effect as a church leader was as important as his effect as a theologian. This chapter concentrates on the early writings of Ding Guangxun, from the 1940s and 1950s, to create a base understanding of his theological position in the first years of his ministry as comparator for later developments. The period encompassed intense debate on the relationship of church and state and includes Ding’s difficult debates with the staunchly separatist church leader Wang Mingdao—debate that precipitated the split of the Chinese Protestant church and whose ramifications are still ever-present.

The Church and the People’s Republic of China

If the early twentieth century saw great growth in the Chinese church, the first decade of the second half of the century saw persecution and a mass falling away from the church. By the end of the 1960s, when public religious activity in China had been shut down for several years, the rest of the world wondered if a Chinese church still existed. The focus of this chapter is the key decade of the 1950s, and particularly the policies and events of the first years of that decade. The chapter discusses the very different responses of Roman Catholic and certain Protestant church leaders to the leadership of New China and to the creation of state patriotic bodies during the difficult transition to a “post-denominational” church.

Visible and Voluble: Protestant House-Church Writings in the Twenty-First Century

The growth of unregistered churches, which now surpass state churches in number, is one of the remarkable stories of modern China. This chapter presents an initial survey of the writings of three Protestant Christians whose theological allegiance is to the house churches: Lü Xiaomin, Wang Yi, and Yu Jie. The chapter begins in the countryside, the nucleus of growth for house churches during the 1980s, where the itinerant evangelist Lü Xiaomin expressed her faith in the medium of the hymn. Lü’s work from the 1990s and 2000s represents an enduring acceptance of persecution, a “suffering servant” model of Christian living. More recently, certain new urban house-church ministers have enjoyed a strong media presence as they have argued with the government over their right to worship and to register their churches. The chapter considers the work of Wang Yi, the pioneer Reformed minister from Sichuan, and his joint writings with émigré dissident Yu Jie. The work of such house-church leaders and their experience speaking nationally and internationally represent a new stage in the history of the Chinese Protestant church.

The Public and Personal Faces of the Church: Xu Zongze’s Sui si sui bi and the Shengjiao zazhi (Revue Catholique)

For the greater part of his adult life, the polymath Roman Catholic theologian Xu Zongze (P. Joseph Zi, S.J., 1886–1947) edited the premier Catholic journal Shengjiao zazhi, or Revue Catholique, from the Jesuit compound in Shanghai, the effective center of the Chinese Roman Catholic world. The directions in which he guided the magazine and the theological, historical, and social articles he wrote offer important insight into the evolution of Chinese Catholicism during the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter sets Xu’s biji, or “thoughts and jottings,” against his “official” magazine essays to explore the congruence or tension between the two voices, and suggests that the theologian and archivist was able to express himself differently in different forms. The unofficial, low-brow jottings constitute a personal view, in a Chinese form, to complement the official (Western-style) theological essays of the magazine.

Wu Leichuan, Christianity and Chinese Culture, and the Kingdom of Heaven

This chapter reassesses Wu Leichuan (L. C. Wu)’s reconciliation of Christianity with Chinese culture by foregrounding the centrality of the Kingdom of Heaven in his thinking. This chapter analyzes the desire to build the Kingdom of God on earth, including especially in economic realms, in Wu’s 1936 Christianity and Chinese Culture. Wu has often been labeled a “Confucian-Christian,” and various studies have engaged with his contextualized Christianity as he negotiates between classical Chinese culture and an emerging modern culture, but the chapter draws greater attention to the theologians with whom Wu is in dialogue: the British, German, and American Social Gospel proponents whose writings on the kingdom had such a critical effect on Wu.

State Regulation, Church Growth, and Textual Profusion

The great growth in the Chinese church and what this might mean for a future China has been the source of much recent media debate as the world has begun to catch up with the development of Chinese Christianities over the past three decades. Chapter 8 assesses how state regulation has attempted to channel and control that growth and analyzes the three broad categories of writing that have emerged out of that attempt, in the form of official church, unofficial church, and academic writings. While “theology” proper designates the output of the state seminaries in an official Chinese construct of categories, the chapter also addresses the burgeoning theological writings in academia and outside the state church.